Despite the large volume of scholarship on the history of the British housing market, rural housing provision has been severely neglected. Yet the countryside had some of the worst examples of English working-class housing conditions throughout the twentieth century and beyond. Keith Hoggart's book, A Contrived Countryside. The Governance of Rural Housing in England 1900–74, is thus a welcome analysis of English rural housing during the first three quarters of the twentieth century, focusing on why rural English housing lagged behind urban housing standards.
This substantial monograph is organized into eight chapters. In the first, Hoggart sets out his “investigative approach” (17–27). This is followed by chapters outlining rural housing conditions and the reasons behind persistently poor rural housing. In “Uneven Demand: Depopulation, Repopulation and Housing Pressure,” Hoggart discusses the increasing domination of the better housing stock by urban residents, for second homes. In “The English Disease: Capacity and Capability for Housing Improvement,” Hoggart examines the problems of deficient rural governance, lack of interest in working-class houses by rural builders, and the poor amenities of many working-class rural homes. In chapter 6, Hoggart examines how national building priorities neglected the countryside, and in chapter 7 he explains how deficiencies in local implementation exacerbated the problem. Hoggart concludes with a chapter relating the deficiencies of English rural housing provision to laissez-faire political economy and to national and local policies and priorities that squeezed out rural housing and utilities upgrading.
Hoggart's research is built on a comprehensive analysis of the secondary literature, together with considerable analysis of unpublished papers in the UK National Archives. This is supplemented with local studies of seven rural districts in Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, and Norfolk. A comprehensive analysis of local sources would have been impossible, given the huge number of English rural districts. Nevertheless, the selection of councils only in the south of England is problematic, given that in substantial parts of the northern English countryside coal mining was a leading employer. For example, in 1931 employment in mining and quarrying outnumbered that in agriculture, forestry, and fishing in England's northern region: Wales, Yorkshire, and Humberside; the North West; and the Midlands. Many miners lived in rural districts and, given their industrial militancy and proletarian outlook, were likely to have been much less deferential to local elites than were agricultural workers. Their rural district councils were also likely to have had a larger element of colliery interests and employees relative to landowners and farmers.
Miners were also paid somewhat better (at least for parts of the period under discussion) than were agricultural workers, whose wages remained at the bottom of the working-class income distribution, in both lean and prosperous times for UK farming. As Hoggart notes, one of the main reasons for rural housing remaining so bad was the very low incomes of farm workers and resistance from their employers to policies that would weaken control over their labor force while also raising workers’ living costs (that might translate into demands for better wages). Thus, despite substantial development of subsidized municipal social housing from the 1920s onward, both the volume of rural council houses and their building specifications lagged behind urban areas. However (as I can personally attest, having lived for the first five years of my life in two privately rented rural houses, both of which were eventually condemned for compulsory demolition, before moving to a council house), while they were far from perfect, rural council houses did at least usually provide three bedrooms and much better amenities.
In A Contrived Countryside, Hoggart also provides some unflattering comparisons between Britain and its European neighbors. In 1963, only 83.2 percent of farms in England and Wales had access to a piped water supply, a rate lower than that of not only most Western European nations, but also some Warsaw Pact countries such as East Germany and Czechoslovakia. Together with the dampness, cramped conditions, and poor insulation of many farm cottages, rural housing must have had a major detrimental impact on the health of farm workers and their families.
No one comes out well in Hoggart's analysis. Rural district councils dominated by farmers and landowners were hostile to council housing or house improvement, based on their own interests, rather than the needs of the people they were supposed to represent. National policy makers gave rural housing low priority, partly in a mistaken belief that out-migration to the towns would solve the problem. Meanwhile, rural builders were reluctant to take on council house building, and when they did, they often provided a poor product at an inflated price. Urbanites also had a negative role, purchasing the better parts of the housing stock as second homes.
This is a book of great scholarship, but it is essentially an advanced text rather than an introductory work. Hoggart provides exhaustive analysis of evidence, supported by numerous tables and graphs. He mentions broader policies, such as the rationale for a laissez-faire state embarking on large-scale social housing development after the First World War and the impacts of stop-go aggregate demand management policy in the 1950s and 1960s, but he does not discuss the wider context in any detail. More ruthless editing could have demonstrated sufficient evidence to prove his points while leaving space for deeper discussion of the bigger picture, thus producing a more accessible text. A more informative title summarizing the main research question—why did English rural housing remain so bad during the early and mid-twentieth century?—might have helped readers to recognize the important topic under examination. However, for scholars of British housing or twentieth century rural history, this will be a book well worth reading.
